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Radar probes frozen water at Martian pole

If all the frozen water stored near the south pole of Mars suddenly melted, it would make a planetwide ocean 11 meters deep. That's what planetary scientists have concluded using data from a Mars-orbiting spacecraft that bounced radio waves off the Red Planet's south polar region.

The finding confirms previous studies showing that the poles of Mars contain the largest known reservoirs of water on the planet. It also provides a more accurate assessment of the frozen, layered deposits at the south pole, Jeff Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues report in an upcoming Science.

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